Collaboration with @silmarilz1701
Svetlana knew how to play the game. She'd been caught in the political drama of Stalin's inner circle since birth. The only child of one of Stalin's closest friends, she grew up in the limelight, scrutinized by frie...
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18 September 1944
Dear Mama,
We are moving out again. Only a matter of time now. I will miss our host family. They were very kind to me and Sveta, and have been the closest thing to home that I have felt in a long while.
Aldbourne is so cozy and warm. I think you'd like it here. Maybe we'll find someplace like it, when we are together. We can have the stone wall around our garden with snowdrops and the daisies you always loved. We'll have the herb patch by the gate and the flowers in the window boxes. I can almost smell the flowers, I've thought about this so much.
Do you think Papa will want it as much as we do?
Papa wouldn't like what I've had to do in the Army. I don't think you would like it either. But I hope you'll understand. When we are back together I'll be able to explain. Writing everything out helps but sometimes you just have to say the words you are thinking. I want to tell you about things. Tell you about people.
I want to introduce you to Sveta. I want you to hear about my new friend, Buck. You'd like him, I think.
We are leaving soon. Dropping out of the sky like leaves from our old birch tree again. I don't mind the height. I don't mind the men so much anymore.
I mind a lot of other things but I'd never tell her. Sveta said that I was a traitor. She was drunk, she didn't know what she was saying. I don't think she thought it was true but I don't know if she knows that it is. I am a traitor to the Russian Army.
I still say my prayers like you taught me. I don't know if they mean anything to me but I say them. Do you think that even though I don't say them outloud they still count?
My prayers make me a traitor, my blood makes me a traitor.
It's not your fault, or Papa's, and it's not really mine either. It's a secret though, that we all share. You, in Poland, with your family and me, here. Alone.
The intelligence officer continues to sniff around. While his red-headed friend goes to services at the local chapel on Sundays, Nixon sniffs around Aldbourne. He seems to want to be looking for something. His eyes are searching for something. He seems to think that I have the answer.
